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World Politics

Frontline aired a documentary on North Korea this past summer, part of which followed a defector returning to the border between North Korea and China to smuggle thumb drives, laptops, DVDs, and radios into North Korea.

Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) will be part of a team monitoring elections this weekend in the volatile country of Ukraine. He will be travelling with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Mass.), and will be leaving Friday to be a part of a team representing the Helsinki Commission and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Toronto Sun reportedly obtained an audio recording of Mayor Rob Ford ranting in a local watering hole and video footage of the mayor smoking crack has also reportedly surfaced again, which has prompted Ford to seek treatment for substance abuse.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who made headlines last year after admitting to smoking crack, was in Vancouver on Friday to attend a family friend's funeral. Unfortunately he was not able to make the cross-country trip without incident.

After receiving the results of Swiss forensic tests on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's corpse, his widow Suha announced on Wednesday that her husband was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium.

Thanks to Edward Snowden and his leaks of NSA secrets, much of the world has been focused on the United States' spying activities. But as it turns out, the U.S. isn't the only superpower seeking to sniff out state secrets of its allies and enemies. At the G20 conference held in St.

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was nominated by President Barack Obama on Tuesday to be one of five alternate representatives to the United States' delegation to the United Nations.

Each nation's delegation to the U.N. General Assembly includes five representatives and five alternate representatives. Strickland's post would be largely ceremonial. He was one of three alternates named by President Obama today.

Strickland, 72, had been previously mentioned for an administrative position since leaving the governor's office, when he lost his bid for re-election to Republican John Kasich in 2010. Strickland has also served several terms as a member of the U.S. House.

On Friday, the State Department ordered all non-essential American diplomats and the families of staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut to leave Lebanon immediately due to security concerns as Congress and the Obama administration weigh whether to launch military strikes on nearby Syria.

Furthermore, the department also authorized the voluntary departure of diplomats and families at the U.S. Consulate in Adana, Turkey, the closest American diplomatic post to Syria in Turkey.

The department is also urging private American citizens to leave Lebanon "due to threats to U.S. mission facilities and personnel" and added:

"The potential in Lebanon for a spontaneous upsurge in violence remains."

A travel warning from the State Dept. read:

"Lebanese government authorities are not able to guarantee protection for citizens or visitors to the country should violence erupt suddenly. Access to borders, airports, roads and seaports can be interrupted with little or no warning. Public demonstrations occur frequently with little warning and have the potential to become violent. Family, neighborhood or sectarian disputes often escalate quickly and can lead to gunfire or other violence with little or no warning."